[BLDG-SIM] Hornet's Next - Policy for Public Investment in Energy Software

[Charles Eley]

Back in October, I wrote down some ideas on how public funds ought to be invested in energy software. I shared the paper with a few friends, but have not "gone public" with it. Since a lot of the issues raised in the "hornet's nest" series are addressed in the paper, I feel now is an appropriate time to share my views with others. The central theme of the proposed policy is that public investments ought to be made in a way that encourage private sector software developers to invest their own funds. This will leverage scarce public funds. Too often public investments in energy software have had the opposite effect, causing private developers to scale back or even withdraw from the business. The paper offers guidelines, which I think would achieve this goal. At this point, the opinions in the policy paper are mine and mine alone.. I welcome your comments.

To address a few additional points raised in the "hornet's nest" series:

VisualDOE 2.6 has a rudimentary link with CADD programs that works OK, but is not perfect. The problem is that about 90% or more of CADD files are not object oriented. In reality they are little more than a collection of lines, arcs and circles. We can recognize a line in the file, but often do not know if it represents a edge of a wall, the centerline of a duct, or a joint in the concrete floor. Until more CADD programs become object oriented and carry around the properties that matter to modelers, there is not much point in making a link. 

The latest version of VisualDOE, Version 3.0, works with DOE-2.2. An announcement was made in the Summer 1999 issue of the User's News. However, the newsletter editors removed all reference to "DOE-2.2" before the article was published, so the only way to know that DOE-2.2 is supported is to make a connection with the new features that are discussed in the article. The "hornet's nest" has prevented us from officially releasing Version 3.0. 

Charles Eley
Eley Associates
charles at eley.com
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